PD Dr. Alexander Semaan

PD Dr. Alexander Semaan is a renowned surgeon-scientist and is funded by the ACCENT program (BMFTR). As a senior physician in visceral surgery specializing in hepato-pancreato-biliary tumors, he is also a member of the “Exzellenzakademie” of the Convention of Professors of General and Visceral Surgery.

He heads a translational research group at the University Hospital Bonn, which is networked through close international and national collaborations with leading institutions such as the MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston, USA), New York University (NYU), and the University of North Carolina (UNC, USA). His group's research focuses on translational oncological surgery, in particular the analysis of the tumor microenvironment, the role of tumor-draining lymph nodes (TDLN), and the use of artificial intelligence to identify precise therapeutic target structures in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC).

The aim of his work is to address surgically relevant questions using state-of-the-art molecular and imaging technologies to enable advances in early detection, resection strategy, and individualized therapy for gastrointestinal tumors. Recently, using spatial sequencing technologies in a unique rapid autopsy PDAC cohort, he was able to show that the spatial organization of fibroblasts shields certain PDAC subtypes from the immune system. His research also demonstrates the potential of AI-based models for preoperative lymph node status prediction based on conventional CT imaging—a crucial step toward precise patient stratification for neoadjuvant therapy concepts. Dr. Semaan is also the principal investigator of several multicenter, prospective randomized clinical trials, including the Transnideg and PreReC studies.

Since mid-2025, he has also been funded by German Cancer Aid as part of the PrepAIred consortium (“Precision Targeting of Pancreatic Cancer by Generative AI-Based Protein Design”) within the German Pancreatic Cancer Alliance, following a highly competitive selection process.